Reserve your suborbital seats

Most of the U.S. is at least dimly aware of Richard Branson's plan to sell seats to sub orbital space on spaceship 2.  Virgin Galactic has not been shy about promoting their business venture with Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites team.  The same populace also has a vague notion that some very wealthy folks have been able to buy their way to the International Space Station via Russian Rockets.

There are other games in town, however, with the latest and most exciting being an agreement between Armadillo Aerospace and Space Adventures.  Space Adventures is the VA based company that brokered all those flights to the space station.  They also own the parabolic flight outfit, Zero-G, to give folks a shot at some weightless fun without leaving the atmosphere.

The agreement with Armadillo allows them to offer a service between those two end points.  They are signed up to be the sole provider of suborbital trips on Armadillo rockets.  It is not clear at this point how the agreement is structured.  Will Space Adventures Own and operate the rockets or simply broker the flights?  My guess is that they will form a subsidiary company to do the former or perhaps as a branch of Zero-G.

While pure speculation, I assume that in exchange for the exclusive rights to sell flights on Armadillo craft, Space Adventures would front some money for development in addition to a signed purchase agreement.  They would be invaluable for market research and aiding Armadillo in clearing regulatory issues as well.

The intrepid Pixel rocket went from a napkin sketch to a flying craft in three months.  This next vehicle shares many design elements with a scaled up Pixel.  Hopefully they can have the propulsion system hovering by fall.

New Armadillo Aerospace video

Armadillo Aerospace has posted a nice video of their activities this past year.  The video was prepared by Matt Ross  for Space Access 2010.  Space Access is an annual meet-up of commercial space insiders.  A NASA moves toward heavier reliance on commercial services Space Access is seeing growth as ever bigger players pay attention.

Some of the highlights of the film are seeing, Armadillo's stalwart performer, pixel fly again.  It has indeed been converted to Methane/Lox and sold to NASA.  And some concepts of a larger quad vehicle sporting a manned capsule.

Some quick dimensions grabbed from the video for the new quad are; 100 inches wide and eight feet tall for the capsule.  It is not clear if those are internal or exteral dimensions.  It appears as though they are going from a 3ft tank to a 4ft tank giving 2.37 times the fuel and lox capacity.  There does not appear to be any helium pressurization tank in the design from the simple drawings shown.  They will probably end up in any final design however.

Coming soon

President Obama is set to address his NASA plan sometime next week.  I am looking forward to being pleasantly surprised.  So far things are not looking good.  Earlier this week NASA Director Charles Bolden equated an increase in the NASA budget with the creation of more jobs.  To me that signals a return to the business of using NASA strictly as a cash cow.  So far the Administrations decision to cut Constellation AND increase NASA's budget can only rate as "horrible."  The only possible positive is the chance to get human rate launchers in the US sooner via the "commercial option."  Time will tell if they can manage that project without turning it into a regulatory fiasco.

I foresee contract requirements to hire a certain number of people with a certain diversity quota.  Basically you must be bloated to play.  Hopefully I am wrong.

Falcon 9 Photos are in!

I have only had two readers and those accidental, but for you my accidental readers I post this link.  Someone has been able to get some nice shots of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket vertical at launch complex 40.  It looks very lovely with the Dragon test article sitting atop.  I wonder how they will eventually get astronauts into the capsule.

Falcon 9 Vertical

The first flight ready Falcon 9 rocket from Space Exploration technologies is now vertical at the cape!  The link I provided does a much better job than I could explaining all the details.  SpaceX should have a static fire complete in the next week or so.  That is of course baring any set backs.  Exciting stuff.  We are inching closer to that unknown date when that beautiful bird finally flies.  I hope SpaceX publishes some video of the roll out.  Geeks like me love that stuff.  A nice night shot at the pad would be welcome as well.

Yay the Cupola

I am quite excited, perhaps not quite so much as the astronauts aboard the international space station, but excited none-the-less.  The windows on the cupola, attached to the tranquility node have been opened for the first time, providing some breathtaking views of earth.  It is a good thing I am too tall to be an astronaut.  I would have wasted all my time staring out the window.  I am sure NASA needs a blogger to write about the earth turning below him right?  It would be great PR and I am only a little bit too tall.  I could hunch.

Anyway the ISS just went from dang cool to full blown awesome.  I am off to look for images have a good one.

New room and hardware delivered

Tranquility is officially attached to the International space station!  I stayed up last night watching Canada Arm2 slowly arc from the Endeavor's payload bay to the common berthing mechanism on Node 1.  Beautiful stuff.

In other wondrous news.  SpaceX has now moved all the necessary pieces of the Falcon 9 puzzle to the cape launch complex 40.  Let the assembly begin.  The inaugural launch should be showing up on a monitor near you (and hopefully me) sometime in the next 1 to 4 months.  I wish they could be a little more specific.  Actually they are.  They report launch 1 - 3 months after hardware integration is complete, but they completely neglect to project how long that integration might take.

In the mean time head over to Russel Blink's Photo stream on flickr an see if you can figure out just what Armadillo Aerospace is up to with it's trusty pixel craft.  From the looks of it, they have modified the craft from an alcohol / lox rocket to a methane / lox configuration.  The give-away is the new application of insulation on all four propellant tanks.  Methane is cryogenic.  Alcohol is not.  They also added more robust landing gear.  My assumption is that Armadillo is under contract with NASA to demonstrate a methane powered lander and is looking to pixel to fulfill that requirement while they use their modular vehicles for in-house differential throttling and multi-engine work.

Up for disappointment

I set my alarm to wake me up at 4:00 AM.  I even slept on the sofa in front of the TV.  When I woke I headed to the basement to throw a few logs into the furnace.  After a cool drink of water I was ready, ready to watch the Endeavor embark on it's second to last mission and the final night launch of the shuttle space transportation system.  There will never be another sight like a night shuttle launch with those beastly solid rocket boosters lighting up the sky. 

NASA TV is probably the worst run network channel in the history of channels of any type.  This includes the English channel and the Strait of Malacca.  The fires light, however, nobody has better programing.  The fires did not light.  They did not even try to strike a match.  Apparently the clouds were too thick.  I don't know why I even bother anymore.  It does not matter how rosy the forecast is.  If I watch they will scrub for weather.  At least with a launch to the space station they tell you right away.  I got to go right back to bed, albeit disappointed.  I did not have to run and look up triboelectrification even once.

Why we need a successful Falcon 9 Launch soon

The real excitement in the face of Obama's budget changes at NASA is the opportunity for privet companies to fill the void with launch services and destinations.  The premier destination at the moment is obviously the International Space Station or ISS, but with two successful pathfinder projects on orbit, there is little reason to doubt that Bigelow aerospace will be able to build it's own working space station for hire.

What is not as clear is whether there will transportation available to get to either location.  The big source of excitement under NASA's new direction is the possibility that America may get a transportation solution soon in the form of a COTS D option in SpaceX's contract.  Many pardons to the other companies looking at various solutions to deliver crew to orbit, but Space Exploration technologies is the only serious player at this point.  No one else has demonstrated a wish to do more than get funding for studies at this point.  Not that I doubt Boeing's or Orbital's ability only that they have not demostrated a willingness to forge ahead with or without a solid contract from NASA.  SpaceX on the other hand built from day one with goal of transporting astronauts.  They are quite simply our current best hope, not just because they already have hardware, but because as a company they are committed.  

Now here is the rub.  While it is fun to hear Elon Musk make bold claims as to what his company is capable, they have zero launch history on their proposed rocket.  I have every reason to believe that they will succeed but it is hard to get a nation and funding behind you when you only have calculations and ground tests to point to.  I am an engineer and mathematician.  I believe the calculations and SpaceX has no bigger fan, but it is time to do away with that nagging feeling of "what if it does not work."  As NASA plans out it's (and our) future it would help if they had something from the commercial sector to hang their hat on. 

A successful Falcon 9 launch would shush the naysayers (although I am sure some will still play the safety card early and often) and instill a sense of excitement in the public, those that pay attention at any rate.  I am sure that the COTS D option or some equivalent will follow a successful launch within a few months.  Unless of course they send up an other round of bidding, which in my view would be a waste of time.

I am sure SpaceX realizes what is riding on their maiden launch and are doing their very best to balance timeliness with being fully prepared.  Failure would be an anchor we don't need.  But failure would allow for a confident turn around to the next launch.  Here's to a quick and successful launch.  All the best to SpaceX and Falcon 9

On a new space race

While we here in the U.S. are trying to get space exploration into the hands of the private sector, (with the government footing the bill of course) the rest of the world is still engaged in a new space race.  It is mostly one of prestige.  Smaller countries have just a few options to make an international splash.  Build a nuke, become an exporting power house, or send a man to space.  The last one turns out to be the one that is sort of within reach for counties that have some money.  Nukes just tend to cause trouble, and building a strong economy is an inexact science.

China has already put a man in orbit and even performed a space walk.  Japan has built two human rated space units.  Neither unit is capable of delivering a human to orbit but they do have the Kibo laboratory on the ISS and the HTV pressurized cargo transport.  India is working toward human capability and now Iran has joined the fray with a plan to orbit a human within the next ten years.  They sent up a rocket loaded with a zoo of small creatures (light ones) just to prove that they could.

I wish them all well.  They will serve as the push for the western world to quit diddling around and actually build some new flight hardware.  I am still holding my breath for the European Space agency to commit to developing a manned capsule to sit atop their excellent Ariane 5.  No one is better at building pressurized volume than Thales Alenia Space in Italy.  I hope to see a concrete solution from them soon.

Looking forward

With the current silliness at NASA, I need to look forward to some of the excitement that is going on in space to keep me sane. I have already informed my senators and congressmen of my displeasure and need to move on.

This month the space shuttle is scheduled to take the last of the American sections to the international space station. Node three (tranquility) will house some terrific life support equipment that will set the standard for long term spacecraft for years to come. It will at the very least let us know where we have to improve. Another exciting piece of equipment heading space-ward is the Cupola. It will be a seven window observation deck and should provide astronauts and cosmonauts an unprecedented view of the cosmos, though I suspect that they will spend most of their time looking at earth. It is about time. If you have an office on the 70,000th floor you had better have a good window.

First Rant

Hello folks,

I scan the news everyday to see what is coming and going on in space exploration. Today the answer is "not much". This is thanks to a new white house budget proposal that would completely put the breaks on project constellation, a project formed with the goal of returning us to the moon by 2020. It appears that this is not going to happen.

Now as always my hat is off to NASA. They have caught the short end of a flailing stick ever since the the last of the Saturn V rockets were mothballed by a short sighted Nixon. It is amazing to see the successes that NASA has been able to produce amid ridiculous requirements and changes foisted on them yearly by a fickle government.

I am not saying that the new plan of fostering commercial alternatives, international partnerships and new technologies is a bad plan. It can be quite exciting. The major flaw with it, however, is that we already have a plan. A plan that was going to take sixteen years to realize. That plan was not perfect either, it came at the expense of fostering private industry as a stand-alone option, but it was still doable and even laudable. What is more, we are already part way done.

NASA needs a goal, a tangible and measurable goal. They need the freedom to accomplish the goal that they are assigned before being set haring after the next shiny target. In 2004 George Bush gave them one, a base on the moon. The new mandate seems to be that NASA needs to return to it's status as a cash cow.

On the flip side I am happy for companies, like Spacex, Orbital Sciences, Bigelow Aerospace, and the Boeing Company. I would be happy to see them branch into orbital crew services, but NASA does not need a budget increase to accomplish that. Not if Constellation is getting killed. SpaceX needs $300 - $400 million to develop and test a launch escape system. Boeing would probably need $1billion. This of course if they are given a COTS like contract structure that passes some risk to the company.

I expect we will get some kind of mixed bag of policies once Congress sinks there teeth into the budget. They will try to find a way to maintain a bloated shuttle workforce during a time when there is no shuttle. I hope that the result is less messy than it looks like right now. Most of all I hope that one day NASA gets some kind of autonomy and goal protection between changing administrations.